Talking Headways Podcast: Cities on a Hill

This week we’re joined by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Francis Fitzgerald to talk about her 1986 book, Cities on a Hill. We discuss the different “visionary” communities described in the book, including Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, San Francisco’s Castro district, Sun City retirement communities, and Jerry Falwell’s moral majority in Lynchburg, Virginia. Francis also talks about living in New York City and restaurant culture in Vietnam.

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This week I chat with my good friend and Bay Area affordable housing developer Ed Parillon. We talk about transportation in Ed’s original home of Trinidad (which has an early busway) and the American influence on the island starting during the second World War. Ed tells me about his favorite world city and what he thinks about being a parent in San Francisco. We […]

Author Shannon Mattern joins the podcast this week to discuss her new book, Code+Clay, Data+Dirt: 5,000 Years of Urban Media. We talk about why the perfect future interface humans are looking for does not exist, and how digital mapping can overlook important aspects of the urban spatial landscape.

This week I’m joined by cartographer Gretchen Peterson to talk about mapmaking and her new book, City Maps: A Coloring Book for Adults. We discuss why she made the book and why she chose the 40 city maps she included in it. Listen in and hear from Gretchen about the art of cartography, including the […]

Christy Kwan, interim director of the Alliance for Biking and Walking, joins us this week to talk about the alliance’s bi-annual national Benchmarking Report. It’s full of great information and Christy shares how local activists might put it to good use in their communities (and why they might not want their cities to score too well in the rankings). Among […]

This week we talk to Mike Lydon of The Street Plans Collaborative and co-author of the recent book Tactical Urbanism. Based on his experience with tactical urbanism, Mike says you know an idea has “made it” when it gets co-opted for things that don’t fit the actual definition. We also discuss how to take a small planning idea and […]

Jeff Wood and I talk about the news of the week that most tickled us or burned us — the BBC’s exposé of anti-social urban design features intended to repel people, San Francisco’s social tensions over the Google bus, and the decision by Cincinnati’s new mayor and City Council to “pause” construction of the streetcar. […]